M Y Alam

M Y Alam is the author of three novels, Annie Potts is Dead,Kilo and Red Laal. He has had several short stories published and is the editor of Made in Bradford and The Invisible Village. He is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Bradford.

M Y Alam wrote a series of articles for the Route newspaper, which were published in 2000-2001 and have now been anthologized in an e-book Apocalypse Not Just Now. Here he answers some questions about the writing process.

In the summer of 2002 M Y Alam spoke to Les Back from Goldsmiths College Centre for Urban and Community Research about his new novel Kilo, the 'riots' of 2001 and the influence of Bradford on his work.

The Route Book at Bedtime (Route 22) is designed for adult bedtime reading, a book of 12 stories that aims to capture those moments of deep emotional significance which return to us in our dreams. But what is the story behind the stories? Here 11 of the authors talk about the inspiration behind the work.

âAdult bedtime books donât come much better than this. The manner in which each story carries such bountiful emotion over only a few pages makes this an ideal bedtime companion.â â The Big Issue in the North

‘This collection shows the versatility of the form with little vignettes of life that are funny, poignant and stuffed with the kind of ordinary people which go to highlight the fact that there really are no âordinary peopleâ.Â All capture a moment in time and as the title suggest, make for a perfect read just before your head hits the pillow.’ - The Crack

‘A twilight dreamscape of hopes, fears, love and loss, The Route Book at Bedtime contains twelve highly individual, contemporary tales, all of which are a reflection of life and truth. A highly enjoyable read. The thread which pulls through all of the stories is that they are adult versions of the fairy tales which we’ve used to explain the world to children as we tuck them up under the duvet and kiss them on the forehead. Reading The Route Book at Bedtime is like looking through a photograph album full of the snapshots which make up a life, but at the same time, it doesn’t shy away from showing us those photographs which didn’t quite make the album. We’re taken on a journey through teenage crushes, love gone bad, love growing old, trying to rebuild, trying to escape, dying. It’s a collection containing stories which are at once stunningly original and familiar. Just don’t plan on getting any sleep once you open the cover…’ – The Short Review

âNothingâs real in this place, I reckon. Everythingâs a performance, a place where truths are masked, words spoken without being said.â

‘In this modern age of tweets and wall-posts, where itâs concision not content that counts, itâs great to find a collection of short fiction that carries both. In the twelve short stories that make up The Route Book at Bedtime, we get the full canon of human experience filtered down to dreamily intimate ten-minute reads. We get the agony and the ecstasy of it all: from playschool through mid-life crises to the end of days, from small towns where everyone knows everyone to the anonymity of the Big City. We also see relationships in all their forms, beginning, flourishing, failing, ending.

Like dreams, some of the stories represent leaps of escape from the daily grind. In Cally Taylorâs âImagination Avenueâ, thereâs a neat twist on the outbreak shocker, in which a street succumbs not to H1NI or even the Rage virus, but instead to a light-hearted dusting of neighbourhood frivolity, a residentsâ backlash against ârubbish adult stuffâ like gardening and microwave meals for one. And Sam Dudaâs âThe Parrotâ is a delightfully uncatchable road-trip tale of beaches, bird-sitting and tombstoning that sits somewhere between Fear and Loathing and The Old Man and the Sea.

At times, of course, dreams turn to nightmare, as in the opening story by Pippa Griffin, which chronicles the cold reality of an adolescent âCrushâ gone sour. And at the other end of the age spectrum, the final story, âSmoke and Dustâ by MY Alam is the real, crushing stand-out here, a two-time narrative on mortality that brilliantly captures the generational gap between those miners of yesteryear and us minors who will never set foot in a pit.

If youâre still yet to experience the joys and growing significance of the short story, youâd struggle to find a better place to start.’ – James Hogg

‘A riveting collection of interviews with British-Pakistani men of all ages discussing drugs, forced marriages, family-life, faith and where home lies. Honest and unsentimental, it’s an impressive excersize in sociology and a terrific read. This, too, is modern England.’ – Mslexia

âOne of the most important books to ever come out of Bradford.â â Bradford T&A

‘A vivid picture of everyday life.’ – Yorkshire Post

‘Made in Bradford is a timely book and one that excels in its simplicity – a presentation of interviews with Bradford born/resident British-Pakistani men; too often the voices we hear the least of in the media stories. Though part of a larger academic study, Made in Bradford refreshingly is stripped of the research and just presents the interviews with no commentary for you to make of what you will. I found the interviews funny, compelling, familiar, energising, angry, mundane and more. In summary, stories of everyday lives, making sense of something bigger.’ – Amazon review

‘Thanks to Alamâs ability to weave individual stories into one coherent protagonist, thereâs enough here to give even the most elusive Whitehall cost-cutter a chance to understand what it is to be a community. We, the imagined society, are left to ponder in a world of austerity what we have in abundance – our rich community diversity. The Invisible Village allows us brief, but engaging segments of a host of varied lives, and Alam has intelligently intertwined passion, honesty, inhibitions, hopes and reflections that invites strangers into their own big society.’ – The Student Journals

‘While this is the second book to feature anti-hero drug dealer Kilo from MY Alam, the great beauty of it is that it works as a stand-alone piece, yet you can almost feel the predecessor adding weight to the story. Red Laal is a fine novel, that stands tall on its own, but even if you havenât read the previous book, Kilo, you can sense this latest book exists in a greater universe than the one you see on the page in front of you.

MY Alam is the pen name of Bradford university lecturer Yunis Alam. That he grew up in Bradford and knows the city like the back of his hand is enormously evident in Red Laal. A previously published academic work by Alam, Made in Bradford, in which he conducted no-holds-barred interviews with some of the cityâs young Asian men is also evidenced in the book, so rich and deep is the texture of the world Kilo inhabits. Sometimes it feels as though you can touch the fabric of the world Alam has created.

Kilo is a drug dealer who has a conflict at his centre. He has a strong moral backbone that makes selling drugs troublesome for him. He doesnât live in opulence with the earnings from his trade â which he clearly could do with more rigour and efficiency if he wanted to â but just earns enough to get by.

With a reputation for being a man who can âfix thingsâ he is called upon to help an âuncleâ rescue his daughter who has been led into a life of vice. Kilo taking on the job of helping the girl is the storyâs first hint that the drug dealer may have something good at heart.

Helping the girl sets off a series of events that lead Kilo into ever more dangerous territory and a voyage of discovery.

A story that absolutely races along and grips like a vice, Pontefract-based publishers Route deserve credit for publishing this book so handsomely and Alam for creating a piece of work that is utterly shot through with authenticity.’

‘Letâs be clear: M Y Alam isnât going to win any awards from Welcome To Yorkshire for his portrayal of Bradford.

There are pills aplenty in Red Laal, but none of them are sugar-coated in this tale of a Bradford drug-dealer which, while the phrase âwarts and allâ could have been invented for it, is possessed of a stark honesty and a brutal authenticity and becomes a thing of beauty in the skilled hands of the author.

Red Laal is a follow-up to Alamâs novel Kilo, also published by smart âboutiqueâ house Route, but it works very well as a standalone novel if you havenât read the first one. You should read Kilo, though, because itâs a pretty nifty piece of work as well.

In Kilo, the titular protagonist â real name Khalil Khan â is a law-abiding young Muslim who suffers a devastating attack which forces him to reassess his world and enter the dark underbelly of Bradfordâs twilight criminal world, becoming a major drug dealer in the city.

After the shattering events of Kilo â which are hinted at in the new book but not really necessary to have a full knowledge of to enjoy the follow-up â Kilo has gone to ground, eschewing the higher reaches of Bradfordâs criminal hierarchy and contenting himself with low-level dealing to a variety of colourful characters on the Bradford streets.

Kilo is a real dichotomy. You want to hate him for his casual approach to peddling drugs â he sees a need and fulfills it to earn a living. But the flipside of Kilo is that he is a character with an extremely strong moral code â skewed somewhat by the world he lives in, perhaps, but admirable and likeable, despite his chosen profession.

Kilo wants to clean up his act, get out of a life of crime. But blood is thicker than whatever plans he has, and the appearance of Red Laal â a truly and wonderfully frightening character â who calls in old family links and debts, drags Kilo even deeper into the ambiguous world of shadows heâs trying to flee.

Kiloâs acquaintance with Red Laal forces him back up the criminal hierarchy and gives him access to secrets which open old wounds as he returns to the Pakistani village of his fathers on a pilgrimage that puts justice high on the agenda.

Red Laal is a real rough guide to Bradford, an unflinching look at the cityâs criminal hinterland, but then MY Alam isnât in the business of tourism. Every city has its underworld, and Bradford is no different. Red Laal is a smart, tough and authentic revenge thriller best served cold, and marks out M Y Alam as a major name in gritty, contemporary gangster-culture crime writing.

It might be a little early in Alamâs career to say heâs the Bradfordian version of Elmore Leonard, but given a few more novels of this quality, at this pace and in this vein, then who knows?’

âAnother gangster with all the presence of a ghost. Just stories you hear over the years. Heavyweight. King shit. Bad arse. Red LaalâŚ If there did exist a Pakistani Don Corleone, then this was him.â M Y Alam’s long awaited new novel.

‘The Invisible Village allows us brief, but engaging segments of a host of varied lives, and Alam has intelligently intertwined passion, honesty, inhibitions, hopes and reflections that invites strangers into their own big society.’ â The Student Journals

Crime thriller from M Y Alam. Introducing the story of Khalil and hi journey into Kilo.

âJust as you’re about to consign the gangster thriller to the bin of obsolescence, bored stiff by a tide of clichĂ¨d storylines, along comes a belter which deserves the highest praise.â – The Big Issue

A lively collection of non-fiction writing from M Y Alam, which pulls together his articles that appeared in the Route newspaper from 2000-2001. Full of wry observations of the world he finds himself in and includes his responses to the Bradford riots and September 11.

Born and raised on inner-city streets in Bradford, M Y Alam’s debut novel tells a story from a Britain we all thought existed, but were never quite sure how. We see events through the eyes of Ammy, a wannabe writer who works in a shop until one day the police barge in, march him down to the station and charge him with the murder of a frail old customer by the name of Annie Potts…

‘If this doesn’t win awards, then there is no justice. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?’ – Artscene

Route (14) Next Stop Hope was the first title in the Route Series of Contemporary Stories to appear in book form, the previous 13 issues had been newspapers. This full anthology contains new work from all the regular contributors to the Route newspaper, plus two further collections edited by M Y Alam and Anthony Cropper.

First published in 1998, Tubthumping was the pioneering short story collection that was the initial force behind the Route imprint. Full of free self-expression, it turned its back on the sort of storytelling that had come to be deemed northern and parochial.

‘The strength in these stories is the way they reflect the times and refute the sterotypes.’ – Alice Nutter

Light Transports is a set of three short-story books that were compliled as part of an arts project and were originally distributed free at railways stations across Yorkshire in 2006. The books feature a wide range of authors including Chenjerai Hove, Steven Hall, Winifred Holtby, Alecia McKenzie, Jack Mapanje, Storm Jameson, Patricia Duncker, M Y Alam and Tom Spanbauer.

A paper by M Y Alam on identity politics within the short story. The paper takes a look at what lies behind the production of short stories, from both a writer's and an academic standpoint. To support this, he offers an insight to 'Getting laced', his first short story, written as homework for English class at school.
The paper was presented at the 11th International Conference on the Short Story in English, Toronto June 2010.

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